A Numbers Game

What do these numbers have in common?

17, 2, 8, 15, and 1481? No, it's not the winning lottery numbers and the winnings.

That's the long and short statistics of my trip to Washington State. Seventeen rolls of film (and yes, I still shoot on film - waiting to get the money together to buy the Canon Digital Rebel so I can use all the lenses I had previously purchased for my existing Rebel).

The number two? That's Mrs. Lawhawk and myself on the trip.

8? That's the number of full days spent travelling throughout Washington. We hit all the major spots on the Western half of the state. From Seattle and Olympia to Yakima and Tacoma. Olympic National Park to Mt. Ranier. And Mt. St. Helens (still smoking). We saw more waterfalls than you can imagine - and yes, dear readers, I know that some of you actually like those waterfall pictures I've posted in the past, so look for more in coming weeks.

15? That's the number of bottles of wine that we purchased. Washington's Yakima Valley sure has some nice wines. We picked up some offbeat wines - semillion, vioginer, rieslings, and even some of that wine formerly known as merlot (still merlot, just not as expensive).

Oh, and that last number; 1481? That's the total miles that we drove. Figuring that we did Seattle to Yakima to Mt. Ranier via Chinook Pass to Paradise to Olympia to Mt. St. Helens to Olympia to a loop around Olympic Nat'l Park to Tacoma back to SeaTac for our flight back, that is actually a pretty reasonable figure. 400 of those miles were done in the loop around Olympic Nat'l Park in a single day. Probably not the best idea, but it was truly worth it.

And how did we love our trip? It was amazing.

Did it rain? Sure, but not nearly enough to soak our picture taking - it was even sunny in the Hoh Rain Forest.

It was awesome seeing Mt. Ranier up close - and the wildlife even closer. Mt. St. Helens blew Mt. Ranier away though. Seeing the absolute power of nature on display puts things in perspective. Knowing that this particular volcano destroyed 230 square miles within 5 minutes is humbling. The effects are still being felt more than 25 years later. Entire forests were blown away. Rivers dammed and channels forever altered. The landscape sandblasted and pulverized.

And it can happen again. No one quite knows when, but it will happen again. I'm happy that I got to view this amazing slice of nature. Seattle was an interesting city, and the scenery was quite enjoyable.

Don't know about the coffee though. I don't get it. There are more coffee houses than there are people or so it seems. What's up with that? Does everyone in Washington need to be hopped up on caffiene every single day?

I will say this though - they do make better coffee there than back in New York - and that includes Starbucks. Maybe it is the water, or maybe they're so accustomed to drinking 500 cups of coffee a day that they need to have coffee that makes an impression. Whatever the reason is, keep it up.

But whoever came up with the study finding that Washington State drivers are better than drivers back in New Jersey or New York simply doesn't have a clue. Every morning I'd watch the news and hear about cars that went off the road, flipped over, or got into fender benders causing multimile delays because of weather conditions.

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but if it's raining, shouldn't you slow down? That doesn't seem to be the way things work in Seattle though. They speed up. Or cut you off.

But they're curteous about it. They'll signal their intention to cut you off, so that must be the reason they're better than New Jersey drivers.